“In my going out to meet you, / I found you coming toward me,” writes Yehuda HaLevi, the great Hebrew language poet (1075 – 1141) of Spain.
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Wearing my new Hokas, I left the store and took the first steps on my short walk back to my son’s new apartment. Fleet Feet, the shoe store, was next door to Pitango Gelato and Coffee where, seven months earlier, my wife and I had met one of my dearest spiritual friends and former colleagues at University of North Carolina Asheville. M. was living with her partner—another former colleague—in Washington, D.C. for the year.
About thirty years younger than me, M. and I worked closely on UNC Asheville’s Contemplative Inquiry Initiative, a project I initiated during my final decade at the university. Through the initiative, faculty, staff, and, on occasion, an administrator or two explored ways of integrating contemplative practices into university life. We created a meditation group for faculty, staff, and administrators, offered day-long retreats, and hosted conferences open to interested folks from other institutions. M. is an accomplished economist as well as a devoted practitioner of yoga. She’s funny, brilliant, principled, beautiful, loving, and deeply spiritual—my kind of woman. Hoping that we’d see each other while I was in town, I contacted M. before our recent trip to D.C. Her partner’s parents would be in town then, she texted me. She didn’t think it would work for us to see each other this visit. I was disappointed, but I understood.
With the shoebox containing my old Hokas under my arm and my feet happy in my new pair, I wasn’t “going out” from the shoe store to meet anyone, and certainly not God. I was returning to the apartment where my wife was napping. We were both tired from a day at the Phillips Collection. There, for the second time, we saw the odd numbered panels of Jacob Lawrence’s great “Migration Series.”
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“You stand, a tower for the near, / refuge to those far off,” writes HaLevi.
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Beginning in the 1910s, around six million African-Americans fled the racist South for what they believed was a better life: the North, where they would be free of the oppression of Jim Crow and have educational and economic opportunities that would enable them to live lives of dignity and self-determination. The North: a refuge to those suffering in Alabama and Louisiana and Mississippi and South Carolina and Florida and elsewhere in the South. In Panel One of Lawrence’s series (which is the visual image for this post), we see profiles and backs of abstracted figures, crowds rising toward three narrow gates for trains heading to Chicago, New York, and St. Louis. The crowds form three triangular, pyramidal shapes, as the broad base of men and women narrows to two or three people at a time who squeeze through each of the gates. Beyond the gates, we see only a pale blue sky. The people are fleeing the narrow place of enslavement, Egypt, and moving toward the wide open place of freedom, the Promised Land.
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Yehuda HaLevi was himself a kind of refugee. In eleventh and twelfth century Spain, he moved from town to town, fleeing some towns under Christian rule, others under the control of North African Almoravids. In 1140, he set off on what would be his final flight from challenging circumstances: he set sail for Palestine, the Holy Land, then under Crusader rule. HaLevi, writes translator and poet Peter Cole, was the “unrivaled master of Hebrew and its prosody” and “the most revered of all the [Hebrew language] medieval poets.” Like other Hebrew-language poets of the period, HaLevi wrote secular and devotional poetry.
“Where Will I Find You,” from which I’ve been quoting, is part of a longer poem HaLevi composed for Simchat Torah, “Rejoicing in Torah.” Simchat Torah is the holiday that celebrates the conclusion of one and the beginning of another cycle of reading the Torah, Bereshit, Genesis, through Devarim, Deuteronomy.
Where, Lord, will I find you:
your place is high and obscured.
And where
won’t I find you:
your glory fills the world.
You dwell deep within—
you’ve fixed the ends of creation.
You stand, a tower for the near,
refuge to those far off.
You’ve lain above the Ark, here,
yet live in the highest heavens.
Exalted among your hosts,
although beyond their hymns—
no heavenly sphere
could ever contain you,
let alone a chamber within.
In being borne above them
on an exalted throne,
you are closer to them
than their breath and skin.
Their mouths bear witness for them,
that you alone gave them form.
Your kingdom’s burden is theirs;
who wouldn’t fear you?
And who could fail
to search for you—
who sends down food when it is due?
I sought your nearness.
With all my heart I called you.
And in my going out to meet you,
I found you coming toward me,
as in the wonders of your might
and holy works I saw you.
Who would say he hasn’t seen
your glory as the heavens’
hordes declare
their awe of you
without a sound being heard?
But could the Lord, in truth,
dwell in men on earth?
How would men you made
from the dust and clay
fathom your presence there,
enthroned upon their praise?
The creatures hovering over
the world praise your wonders—
your throne borne high
above their heads,
as you bear all forever.
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“[I]n the wonders of your might / and holy works I saw you.”
Lawrence’s “The Migration Series” is painted with Casein tempera, a paint derived from milk protein. HeLevi’s poems are composed of air from the lungs, the vibration of the vocal cords, and the shaping of sounds with the mouth and throat. The voice was translated into visual form, alphabetic writing, and was initially preserved in iron gall ink written on parchment or vellum. This poem, these paintings: wonders. The might of human imagination and artistry. Do I see (or hear) God when I am in their presence? How could I, if “no heavenly sphere / could ever contain [God], / let alone a chamber [painting or poem] within”?
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As I walked on Columbia Road in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C., in the distance I saw a slender figure, her long, straight reddish-brown hair sweeping over her shoulders, walking toward me. Was it her? I took another step or two toward her and she took another step or two toward me. Then I saw what I thought was a gesture that said she recognized me. It was indeed her! M. and I were now racing toward each other on the same sidewalk, in the same block that we had walked toward each other, having planned to meet, just a few months ago!
We hugged. Then we stepped out of the way of foot traffic on the sidewalk to talk. We talked mostly about the English department, my former department. Her partner had recently finished a term as department chair. Though we talked about unpleasant challenges and changes in the department and across the university, there was something else that held us together: a deep, unspoken spiritual connection.
Was our bumping into each other a coincidence? Did it have anything to do with each of our spiritual journeys? Even when I’m not aware of doing so, I’m always seeking nearness. In a poem. In a painting. In a friend. Even in a shoe store. Maybe God is beyond the beyond. Maybe God is nearer than near. For a moment—five minutes? ten?—I experienced nearness. A closeness that was also spacious, expansive. M. and I together on the sidewalk. Then we kissed and parted, she to her errands, me to my wife and son.
I saw you, I said silently as I walked away. Yes, I saw you.
Richard Chess has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Love Nailed to the Doorpost. Professor emeritus from UNC Asheville, where he directed the Center for Jewish Studies for 30 years, Chess serves on the boards of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, where he co-directs its Faith in Arts project. You can find him at www.richardchess.com .
